The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_
BLEFIRMAGEST
like writing fairy tales or news reports, composing music and pulling weeds would seem to have little in common. Lately I've gotten a boost from hearing other musicians admit the difficulty of turning what they hear inside into music they can play. What I do is to play along very softly, so as not to overpower it. Then depending on the chops I've got for the key it's in, a real fit can be tricky.
Perhaps a blatherfest. (Your congress person will return this in an email marked: Do Not Reply.)
A fish flopping in a net is the fate of a legacy, once considered sacrosanct I would say, of that scholar sitting cross legged at the foot of the Oxford English Dictionary, wafting fumes from a crack in the library door, singing Delphic visions – Aristotle, Pythagoras, Bob Dylan. A sprite flies out, liberated, leaving only laughter for an unsuspecting world, while the words themselves gather dust on high shelves.
When the Bard said all the world's a stage, I imagined everyone up there on it, not quite realizing it's just a play, or that my audience of just one actually contains all those characters. When meeting someone, it's groups of people passing through each other, most of them looking the other way.
It should not be possible to acknowledge the climate disaster and still feel OK about weeding. That activity might seem irrelevant. But for anyone who hasn't been wiped out, there are always weeds. The metaphor could be used in a screed on the civilized path to climate change.
We could do better.
I am not an academic weeder, so I call the most active one a million-seeder. It's a beautiful weed, with lacy leaves, a stalk in the center with lovely little white flowers. If they mature into pods, the seeds become spring loaded. When ready, one touch will send them flying in all directions, and best not to get very close. Watch your eyes! And all of them, all as in countless, are guaranteed to grow.
Luckily for the weeder, they are easy and fun to pull. One has an opportunity to smell the soil.
The feel of the soil would fill several volumes, but why? Its texture depends upon rain and birds, worms. Suffice to say that relevance is a matter of context, which gradually expands as concentration deepens. It's not deliberate. A bird brings it home. What do birds know? To have a bird friend, what can be said?
In retrospect, I'm pretty sure this weeding thing is a million-seeder. So I'll just step out of the way.
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The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_